Anthony Watts has often snuggled up to Dr. Soon. Hand-waving about solar climate influences has been a great side-show for denialists, but it’s been hard for them to find a reliable figurehead for their obstruction. Being able to whisper “HArvard! SmithSONian!” must have been just irresistible. Dr. Soon’s work, while widely discredited, had a “sciencey” look and he made a great tame Republican witness in kangaroo court Senate Hearings.

The best Anthony can do is suggest that the benighted Dr. Soon is the victim of a smear campaign because, well, facts are smears. Then the usual Morris Dance ensues: invoke the malevolent “compliant media” and immediately talk about something else.

Did you know that “climate science is a huge money machine”? So what if Willie wanted a taste! Anthony tries to play the herd mentality card (I guess that makes Dr. Soon our latest Galileo, funny how he’s always reincarnated as a denialist these days) but doesn’t notice that each ‘overturned consensus’ came about through considering new evidence, not through pig-headed repetition of the same crap.

Butter wouldn’t melt in Anthony’s mouth though when he brazenly tries to invoke the e-mails of mainstream climate scientists targeted in the false “Climategate” uproar. They solicited funds from the energy industry too, although without the flirtatious promises, Willie’s just the latest nose in the trough! What were once vices are now virtues, the denialist outrage during Climategate is so yesterday.

Remember the whole “97% of climate scientists accept the evidence of global warming” thing? Guys like Willie Soon are the 3%.

“Follow the money” Anthony sagely advises, but he really wants to lead us down the garden path.

“Bigger problems than global warming – NASA discovers 8 new dangerous near Earth asteroids“ (2015-01-19i). Red Alert! Anthony Watts wants us to know about Eric Worrall’s shocking discovery that there’s something we should all really be worried about! Meteors! Meteorites? NEOs? Stop worrying about so-called climate change (which is already affecting everyone on Earth and will steadily increase in impact) and start worrying about meteors, which may or may not strike the Earth and would have effectively no prolonged climate influence.

“[T]he risk of a damaging meteor impact is not a possibility which should be neglected” says Eric. Somehow Eric’s caution doesn’t extend to the undeniable (except by, you know, denialists) fact that man’s industrial activity is already measurably altering Earth’s climate in a negative way. That should be neglected as well as vigorously denied.

Riiiiight.

Eric also manages to throw in a heaping plate of sneering at NASA for the work they’ve done to study the risks posed by Near Earth Objects while being careful not to explain that low funding for the work is because of cost-cutting anti-science Republicans.

Eric’s apparent belief that satellites should be able to refuel as easily and often as the average family sedan is just cute.

I’m mildly horrified that a project this important appears to be so far down the list of priorities, that the project was mothballed for a year while the survey satellite stood waiting for a refuel.

Buy why are political cranks like Eric and Anthony bothered with public safety? Surely all handsome, virile, brilliant, libertarians will have made their own personal arrangements to either leave the planet for an extended vacation or activated their bunker networks. Anyone unable to do the same surely deserves what they get!

P.S. Does Eric Worrall actually rely on The Register for breaking scientific news?

Funny how “Just The Facts” manages to ignore so many of them. Maybe he meant just a fact, not the relevant ones. Do glaciers float when the reach the sea, for instance? Do they become thinner? Something for JTF to ponder.

Sea Ice bunnies have ears, but not toes. Great science,”Just The Facts”! Image Credit: NSIDC

Now if there’s one thing Anthony likes it’s a tasty cherry-pick. His (unqualified) buddy Russ Steele has done the ‘sciencey analysis’ for him too! It’s all laid out on Russ’ website, concerned with “AGW Defeat” as well as security, liberty and property.

First Russ/Anthony decides that the Governor is referring to a particular Lake Tahoe weather station, one that they can spin to their own benefit.

Then he declares that the rise is all “Urban Heat Island” effect – a tennis court was built nearby in 1980! Actually, as Anthony knew, the courts were built in 1973 and can’t be honestly linked to the alleged artificial 1980 change in temperature trend. Which kinda happened globally, so that’s one heck of a tennis court.

Next, it’s also all bad weather station siting. There’s a fire barrel nearby, it must burn constantly! Anthony, of course, has no evidence about how long the fire barrel has been there, how often it was used, or at what time of day it was lit in comparison to the times of measurement. Still, fire barrel!

Next, he selects some other stations that show a different temperature trend (still up though, unless you squint… which Anthony does). This is the one thing that could be a legitimate argument, but of course he restricts himself to selected weather stations that suit his argument, not a scientifically legitimate regional comparison. Doing that might not make his case…

Finally, he declares that the scientists involved are “political hacks”. Surely if this was likely to stick he’d start and finish with this. And maybe demonstrate it clearly.

Well! Done and dusted for Anthony. A disused fire barrel and tennis courts in place long before a disputed temperature trend started have proven, once and for all, that there is no Global Warming. Never mind that his argument never rises above vague, un-verified supposition.

Note: This post was written so that comments made in a recent but unrelated post could be associated with the correct topic. It’s just run-of-the-mill denialist noise on Anthony’s part.

Authors Steirou and Koutsoyiannis, after taking homogenization errors into account find global warming over the past century was only about one-half [0.42°C] of that claimed by the IPCC [0.7-0.8°C].

Them climate scientists are manipulat’n data for their Commie bosses! Not Steirou and Koutsoyiannis…

Strange how Anthony forgets that even denialist Roy Spencer’s satellite temperature records show a 0.46°C rise in 33 years. One might think a bit of caution is in order when someone claims that only there’s been 0.42°C of warming over the last century.

A student can make an error and conferences are there to talk about preliminary results, much more worrying is that Anthony Watts keeps on getting his facts wrong. An EGU abstract is simply not a peer reviewed paper. Of the three sentences Watts cited from the “peer reviewed paper”, two can only be found in the slides of the talk, which are not reviewed. Every post on Watts up with that?that is on a topic I am knowledgeable about, contains serious factual errors and clear misrepresentations. I am not talking about having another opinion, but facts. If clear facts are already wrong, I start doubting the rest. One wonders why the readers of Watts up with that? keep on reading that stuff. There seems to be little interest in the truth among these self-proclaimed skeptics.

We’ll leave the final insight to one of Anthony’s squad of censors “moderators” who is proud of how enthusiastically and regularly wrong WUWT is:

[REPLY – What it means is that WUWT, unlike nearly all alarmist blogs, does not censor contrary points of view. Science is a very back-and-forth kind of thing. Anyone can be wrong. Anything can be wrong. Consider that. ~ Evan]

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Some notes on the Heartland Leak (2012-02-15). Anthony Watts urges us, as others have noted, to ‘pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!’ The revelation that he co-ordinates with and has received money from the Heartland Institute does not mean that he’s just an unscrupulous mouthpiece. He’s definitely not panicked by the exposure either.

James Hansen! Algore! The e-mails were stolen! Some of them are fake!

Anthony’s just collateral damage here though. The real story here is that the notoriously partisan Heartland Institute, a “free-market think tank” theoretically ‘providing information to inform policy debate’ but long regarded as the political home of climate denial, tobacco enthusiasm and government hating, has suffered an embarrassing “leak” of documents. Nothing like a little sunshine to make the bugs skitter.

Of course this is totally different from the “Climategate” e-mails, which revealed that in private conversation some climate scientists didn’t hold high opinions of global warming deniers. The fact that the Heartland Institute spends most of its time and money scheming to confuse the public and to undermine objective scientific advice (i.e. funding Anthony Watts) is an irrelevance in comparison! Thus ending Global Warming forever.

Anthony’s personal defense boils down to noting that the Heartland Institute and an “Anonymous Donor” have (to our knowledge) only given him $44,000 for one particular project. Dr. James Hansen has received way more dough, therefore Anthony is less of a hypocrite. Now that’s what I call claiming the high ground.

However, Anthony’s concealed “scientific” funding came from a biased political organization. That’s a tough one to skate away from, huh?

Note to Anthony: you just look stupid when you try to contrast all money spent in support of any environmental cause to just the political funding for opposition to CO2 regulation. Unless of course the Heartland Institute and their ilk are also busy arguing on behalf of, for example, killing more endangered species or putting more mercury in fish.

2012-02-20 update: Peter Gleick, at the Huffington Post, is the source of the Heartland Institute leak and asserts their authenticity.

“Climategate 2.0 emails – They’re real and they’re spectacular!” (2011-11-22). Remember Climategate? The stolen climate scientist e-mails that denialists tried to cherry-pick and twist into… something? Happened just before the Copenhagen climate conference. Anthony Watts and his team remember and they’re still sullenly licking their wounds over that misfire (but putting on such a brave face…).

Now we have new stolen e-mails with “new revelations!” Coincidentally, just before the Durban climate conference.

Oh. It’s just a second batch of even tamer messages from the first theft. Still, plenty of opportunities to make a fuss, tut and titter, and infer darkly. That’ll do, right Anthony? Especially since the first thing Anthony seems to have done is search for his own name. (Could vanity be the motivation behind everything Anthony’s done?)

Here are a few links on Climategate 2.0, I doubt I’ll cover what will undoubtably be a flood of outraged irrelevant posts on Anthony’s blog: